Baseball and the Olympic Lifts

One of the most popular questions I get is about using the Olympic lifts with baseball athletes.

First off, I came up through my athletic career as well as my early coaching career with the Olympic lifts as a staple. I even trained as an Olympic lifter for an extended period of time on the Bulgarian, and Russian systems years ago. I loved the Olympic lifts. I have no hate at all for the lifts but I also believe they aren’t always right for my baseball athletes. The clean, snatch, and its variations are just a tool among many, and not a necessary piece for any athlete. All lifts in the weight room are general in nature. No lift is absolutely necessary or specific to any team sport. Many people believe the back squat is the king of the lower body and the only way to train. We haven’t used a back squat in half a decade. Yes, we have beliefs and opinions about movements we want to incorporate, but I understand that there is no one single necessary exercise. We pick and choose exercises based upon athlete need, movement patterns, preventative measures against injury, etc. We’re not married to any weight room exercise. There are no necessary lifts and the Olympic variations, in my opinion, are no different.

Highly Technical

The lifts themselves require a great amount of technical work. This is good and bad when it comes to baseball athletes. Baseball, unlike football, at the HS level doesn’t always have a development program in place, so many times baseball athletes have never done a clean or snatch. A clean slate in many ways is the best option when it comes to learning a new lift. That being said it takes a considerable amount of time to groove the proper movement pattern on such a complex lift. On the flip side, athletes that have done the lifts for years with major technical flaws become virtually impossible to reteach a broken pattern. The nervous system is grooved through many hours good or bad. When it’s bad it doesn’t wash away easily. Technique is something that can take weeks, months, even years develop properly. The technical nature of the lifts require ample practice to get the full benefits. Athletes that spend months in learning mode are spinning their wheels of development. We could take multiple other means and be developing explosive qualities during those months of trying to learn a competent clean.

What we commonly see called a power clean ends up being a rounded back, reverse curl, into a hyperextended, sumo squat catch. Many athletes never achieve real triple extension through the hips. Powerful hip extension is the primary benefit of the movement. Often hips shoot up before the spine moves and all stress moves from where it should be to where it shouldn’t. The legs and hips are no longer the emphasis as the lower back tries to make up the difference. On the catch, knees shoot out in front of the toes, with feet wide in what looks like a limbo contest trying to lay back under the bar. What it ultimately comes down to in the technical aspect is coaching, and time. Can these lifts be safe and beneficial? Absolutely. Often coaches don’t have the patience to wait technique out. And when this is the case there is too much room for error in my opinion. In the quest for numbers technique gets glossed over quickly.

Power Development

The biggest claim to utilizing the Olympic lifts are the development of power. Power gains often take long periods due to inefficient technique, as well as lack of significant loading, like mentioned above. Secondly, any lift can be done explosively. Especially so with more advanced athletes that use velocity based training means. Power isn’t only developed with cleans, and snatches. The clean commonly moves at 1.2+ m/sec. Jumps, medball throws, sled pushes, resisted towing, and sprints move multiple times faster than a common Olympic lift. The clean really only moves about half a meter per second faster than a squat at the same percentage. Sprinting can reach upwards of 10+ m/sec. Not only are ground reaction forces greater, but sprinting more closely resembles the demands an athlete faces in competition on a field. Medball throws, jumps, bounds, sprinting, pushing sleds all exhibit powerful efforts that have the ability to go well beyond the speeds and power produced by an average Olympic lift. Factor in technical errors that come from inefficient athletes in the lifts and the true power outputs are even lower than initially assumed.

Time

Time is the major factor involved in why we prefer to use alternative means to develop rate of force development, and/or strength speed. I don’t have time to wait on a pitcher to develop the technical aspect for a safe clean, and then the strength to actually make gains from the Olympic lifts. Sprints, jumps, and medball throws can benefit my athletes from day one. With the restrictions on how much time we now have developing our kids I need the most bang for my buck right now. Sprints, jumps, and throws give that to me immediately.

Plane specific

For us, the Olympic lifts are not plane specific to a rotational athlete. While they do train triple extension, time is more wisely spent on transverse, and frontal plane movements training speed, power, and strength in a rotational pattern. I understand that the Olympic lifts are general in the weight room along with every other lift we train. I realize though that the closer we get to movement specificity the closer the transfer will be on game day. We don’t claim all of our rotational movements to be sport specific but we know based on Anatoli Bondarchuk’s work that training movement patterns that closer resemble sport equates to increased transfer. Hip, and pelvic rotation, front leg blocking, thoracic rotation are all hugely necessary training components whether fast, or slow for rotational athletes. We can train the body through a variety of means to fulfill these objectives. Some will be more specific than others but using these means forces the body to develop a more robust motor program in the appropriate planes. In the end rotational movements should win out in terms of priorities.

Mobility and Injuries

The Olympic lifts take a high level of mobility through the entire body to properly drop and catch the lifts. Compensations in mobility, and technique put stress and strain throughout the body during the catch. Baseball itself is a beating on the wrists. During my time Olympic lifting the most painful area of my body were my wrists. They were constantly in pain. The wrist, for position players, is a common problem area, especially the ulnar sided TFCC ligament. Catching a hand on the ground during a slide, or jamming a wrist into the bag are common during the year. Even swinging creates high stresses at the wrist. Injuries, and aggravation are common throughout the year. Athletes often compensate for the inability to drop under the clean by shooting out the feet out wide. The result is a catch low on the chest. Elbows down means lots of wrist stress. Not a great position for athletes who depend on wrist health.

The most common injury we see in baseball now are lower back stress fractures. Taking stress of lower back by eliminating over extended positions becomes a key for us in keeping athletes healthy. Going into hyperextension is one thing. Doing it while throwing and catching a clean is another story.

There is just too much risk vs reward for us in with the Olympic lifts and other variations. I know we can get much better benefits from other movements without the stress, strain, or time required while being much more specific to an athlete’s actual sport. The Olympic lifts are nothing more than another tool. They are general in nature and can be replaced easily with other movements with the same end goal in mind. What it comes down to is how much time you are willing to devote to developing a safe, effective Olympic lift. Could that time be more wisely spent in other avenues developing explosive athletes?